Thoughts on the craft of family history and genealogy, and random reflections on some of the things that flash like stars across Memory’s mirror. Oh, yeah...books and archives, too!

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Those Pesky Penciled Census Codes in The 1940 Census

The Famous Ovaltine Decoder Ring

As genealogists, we strive to extract every last bit of
information from a record. This, of course, is a good thing, all things
considered.

The problem comes when we try to read too much into a record
and then start to see things that aren’t really there.

Surely that mark or code must mean something important,
we tell ourselves, otherwise why would it be there in the first place?

Do we need to get ourselves a secret decoder ring?

For example, now that the images of the 1940 Federal census
are available for free in a number of locations online, people are flocking to
the sites, downloading the images that they need, and now puzzling over some of
the cryptic additions that were added to the census sheets once they reached
the Bureau of the Census in Washington.

Could these cryptic codes added by the Census Bureau clerks contain
additional information that would better help us understand the census entries
in question? If we knew exactly what
they meant, might we better understand some small part of our ancestors’ lives? Really, do we need that ring?

Actually… probably not.

Once the 1940 census sheets got to the Bureau of the Census
in Washington, coding clerks went through them, looking for obvious mistakes,
inconsistencies and so on. An elaborate
coding protocol was established so that the results could be quickly tabulated
mechanically. For example, if someone
self-reported as “married”, but no spouse was present in the household, coding
clerks were instructed to draw a line through the census taker’s “M” and write
the code “7” in the space. Thus a penciled
“7” means “self-reporting as married, but no spouse present.”

So, does this add anything to the researcher’s understanding
of the census entry?

Actually… probably not.

The census entry clearly shows that the spouse is not
present in the enumerated household. It
is not possible to tell from either the entry or from the coder’s actions
whether the person coded as a “7” is married or not, even though he or she
self-reports as such.

In reality, the coding clerks in Washington were not privy
to any additional information. Their only
job was to code the information on the census sheets so that they could be
machine-tabulated. The coding operation
was elaborate, employing, at its peak, 848 clerks working in two shifts. There were general population coding clerks
for the initial review, “comparison clerks” and even special editors to review
and pass judgment on the new migration information contained in the question
about residence in 1935.

Still, the information being coded was simply the
information on the census sheets, as filled in by the census taker, nothing
more and nothing less. The Washington
coding clerks were not endowed with special powers to know more about your
ancestors than what was recorded by the census takers in the field, and even
THAT information may be suspect.

Of course, sometimes, the code or correction was used to adjust
a census taker’s failure to follow instructions.

For example, enumerators addicted to detail often put exact
amounts in column 33 in spite of instructions to the contrary (column 33 was the “other income” column). The Washington coding clerks were instructed to
cancel out the amount and replace amounts over $50 with “yes” and amounts below
$50 with “no.” After all, that was what
the question actually asked. It was a “did
you” question, not a “how much” question. Similarly, in the “income” column (Column 32) coders were instructed to cancel
amounts over $6,000 and replace them with “$5,000+”

(Note: if you were at my talk at the wildly successful New York Genealogical and Biographical Society - New York Public Library’s
“Road to the 1940 Census” event on March 24th, you would have found
a link to the IPUMS site in my handout and would possibly have remembered my
exhortation to the audience of nearly 500 genealogists to “Read the Enumerator’s Instructions and also Read The Procedural
Histories”, both of which can be found on the IPUMS website.)

Bottom line:
Sometimes, what you see on the population schedule is actually all there
is. Coding clerks are rarely in a position
to add new or more conclusive information.

Sometimes – and with all due apologies to Sigmund Freud - ,
a cigar is just a cigar, no matter how much we’d like to have it convey much
more meaning.